@monster Timing-wise, that sounds unlikely: Chrome team's rejection happened months before Apple announced intent to ship. Legend goes that Apple's community collaborators were the ones who convinced Apple.
JPEG XL was co-invented by Google Research Europe… just a different office/department from the Chrome team. Stubborn conflict of interest (the person who removed the Chromium JXL code is a WebM & AVIF co-author) & internal power struggles seem more likely than "revenge against Apple" to me?